ARCHIVE What it's Like to Buy a Vehicle Through Canary Island Rover?

[CIR]

Hi MUD,

This is an open thread intended for past, present, and prospective clients of Canary Island Rover to share their experiences - good and bad - of buying a vehicle on the other side of the world without ever grabbing the wheel before signing the check.

Our client relations and buying process have come a long way since the start in 2015.

Maybe someone who is considering the adventure of signing on will see this and learn from the collective experience?

I will (mostly) sit on the bench for this one as yall have fun chatting it up.

Saludos,
Adam

 

[Bblair]

Adam was great to deal with during the entire process. It's been about 16 months since the importation of my 1993 HZJ73. I would not hesitate to work with him again, in fact an HZJ74 is definitely in the works when it's legal.

Regards,

Brian

 

[turtlepower]

I'm in the process of buying a Land Cruiser through Canary Island Rover (Adam) right now. My main concerns when I was looking at importing a vehicle were finding an import broker and setting up the transportation. Adam has looked after all of that so it's been a pretty easy process for me so far. He test drove a few vehicles for me and gave me good feedback on which vehicles he thought were good and which ones he recommended avoiding. That was reassuring that he was trying to find a good one instead of trying to make a quick sale.

I considered importing from Japan for a while, but decided that I'd prefer a left hand drive model. I'm assuming that Japan has a larger selection of vehicles to choose from than the Canary Islands, but there were still good vehicles for Adam to go look at every 2-3 weeks in the Canary Islands.

More updates to come, the vehicle is sitting on a boat right now and is scheduled to leave tomorrow.

 

[Longrange]

As others here have already said, working with Canary Island Rover was great. Adam is top notch, if anyone reading this is on the fence about importing. Adam makes the process painless and simple. You will not regret working with Canary Island Rover.

 

[CIR]

Thanks for the kind words - Brain, Mike, and Doug!

If you ever need any technical advice or need any parts in the future I am here for you.

And if I don't have the answers, then my team at Toyota definitely will.

Enjoy the ride!

 

[MitchM]

Hi MUD community,
Just wanted to share my experience working with Adam @ Canary Island Rover.
I have been on the hunt for a Toyota Hilux LN65 (double cab) for a long time and knew I’d have to source this either in EU or South America given I wanted a left hand drive. I luckily found Adam and he not only drives a Hilux (LN105) but knows a ton about them. I did a couple of reference calls with customers and decided to make the leap. Adam’s very professional and you execute a US contract for his services.

My experience with Adam has been outstanding and he helped source several LN65s for me to look at online and then we decided that going to look at a couple was worth his time. We found one that looked in good shape and Adam did the initial inspection in person and then brought his mechanic for a more detailed inspection.

We decided to purchase and then we built a punch list of items that I wanted Adam’s mechanic to fix before being shipped to me (timing belt, brakes, minor rust, oil change, etc maintenance items) and he gave me a quote, then started the work with constant updates both pictures and videos of all the work being completed which I really appreciated. Turns out that the Canary Islands are the import hub of Toyota for Europe + Africa so there’s a massive Toyota center there and tons of local parts for any year Toyota. I’m planning a trip to the Canary Islands just so I can experience it.

Then I threw Adam a curveball. I recently moved from California to Lisbon, Portugal for the next year so I wanted him to ship it to Lisbon vs California as originally planned. Although he had never imported to Portugal before, he seamlessly took care of all of the export/import/shipping paperwork and kept me in the loop with his communications with the freight + import companies. I had never done this before and there are many many parties to coordinate let alone the language barrier.

The shipping company even made an error paying the Import tax which Adam was also able to rectify after many many hours of speaking with the Spanish shipping company and Spanish tax authorities. Long story short, when something goes wrong, I was lucky to have someone who is very familiar with this process, can speak the language and is physically located in the same country+time zone to expedite any paperwork or responses, otherwise you can lose days + weeks just in dealing with time zones!

I received my 1987 Toyota Hilux in Lisbon and I then got it registered in Portugal and it’s been amazing to drive. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been offered $ but this one is not leaving my possession until i’m in the ground.

Adam is the real deal, very professional and knowledgeable in classic vehicles and export/import to anywhere at the end of the day. Worth every penny if you’re serious about importing a quality vehicle from abroad.

Any questions feel free to post or DM me.
“Oh what a feeling…..”
-Mitch